Ole John

Det Danske Filminstitut wrote:
A razor, a hand, some white foam, a neck, a man talking, piano notes. A shaving is closely followed.
The title refers to a social democratic slogan.Read More »

Det Danske Filminstitut wrote:
An experimental portrait of American jazz pianist Bud Powell. In most of the film, Powell walks the streets of Copenhagen, but there are also excerpts from ‘… a concert recording from Montmartre, where Powell’s fingers and face are studied in a series of beautiful, dark settings while he plays, but without synchronous sound. On the soundtrack, Bud Powell is heard playing, and Dexter Gordon tells a few stories at the beginning and end about Powell and his innovative impact on jazz’Read More »

Det Danske Filminstitut wrote:
This film was shot in the autumn of 1967 among European and American hippies in Nepal. We observe the way of life these hippies have chosen to live »outside of society« in the light of the everyday rites and ceremonies of the Nepalese. We see that the hippie movement is not just a caprice of fashion, but a religion. »We have to be here. To meditate. To pray. This way we can turn the atomic bomb into a flower«.Read More »

From the cover:
In this small film, shot in Estepona in the south of Spain, Jørgen Leth and Ole John pursue the principle of asynchronisation and the juxtaposition of disparate elements. The images are footage from a barbershop, a talking man’s face and black film. The sound likewise embraces three elements: a story of how cement is made, which has neither head nor tail; a recording of a shave; and Louis Hjulmand’s score. The tight framing lends the mundane act of a shave a beauty of its own. Meanwhile, in the juxtaposition of near-rambling monologue and music, something else emerges, something more. As a viewer, you try to connect the two, but because no such connection exists, you have to surrender to the pure “experience” of images and sound. The title, a Danish Social-Democratic election slogan, is meaningless in this context. However, if you play around with the juxtaposition of the world “security” and the shots of the man’s soft skin and exposed neck under the barber’s sharply honed razor, the mock meaning rubs up against an altogether different one.Read More »